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Alcohol's Effects: Old vs. Young People

Social drinking seems to impair older people more thantheir younger drinking buddies. Also, older people are less likely to realizehow the alcohol is affecting them, according to a new study.

The study, published in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs,is based on a research study with 42 older participants between the ages of 50and 74 and 26 younger participants between the ages of 25 and 35. Allparticipants were social drinkers and nonsmokers.

For the study, some participants from each age group consumed a moderateamount of alcohol while others drank non-alcoholic placebo beverages.Participants took a test at 25 minutes and 75 minutes after drinking. The testsrequired them to connect letters and numbers in order with a line. It wasdesigned to measure visual-motor coordination, planning, and the ability tomove from one task to the next.

Participants also rated how intoxicated they felt and how much they thoughtthe alcohol impaired their performance on the tests.

Although peak breath-alcohol measures were similar between the older andyounger groups of drinkers, older participants who had received alcohol tooklonger to complete the test than the younger participants did. This performanceage gap did not happen with non-drinkers. A difference wasn't seen between theolder participants and younger participants who had consumed non-alcoholicbeverages.

"That doesn't sound like much, but five seconds is a big difference ifyou're in a car and need to apply the brakes," researcher Sara Jo Nixon, apsychiatry professor at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute,says in a news release. "It can mean the difference between a wreck, andnot-a-wreck."

Also, older drinkers were less likely to realize they were impaired at thetesting 25 minutes after alcohol consumption. That can be dangerous, as olderdrinkers may think they are fine to drive when they are not. At 75 minutesafter alcohol consumption, the older drinkers reported more impairment althoughtheir test performance was similar to the older participants who hadn'tconsumed any alcohol.

Nixon offers this advice: "If you have a couple of drinks at dinner, sitaround, have dessert -- don't drive for a while."

Alcohol consumption among older adults is likely to become a larger publichealth issue. More than half of adults over the age of 55 drink in socialsettings, according to background information in the study. Also, thepercentage of the population that is older is projected to increasedramatically over the next couple of decades. By 2030, one in five U.S.residents will be over the age of 65.